


Learning Curve

by lovecatcadillac



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: 1940s, F/F, Female Friendship, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovecatcadillac/pseuds/lovecatcadillac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December 1942. Kate is back in Toronto and dating Betty, but she’s still got a lot to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Trigger warning for biphobia. Please let me know if I should add any more.
> 
> Notes: Deals with similar themes to my other future!fic, Musical – namely, the practicalities of dating a woman in the 1940s and now (labels, queer virginity, sexual politics and whatnot). Takes place in December 1942. Written in the break between Season 1 and 2 of Bomb Girls, so will most likely become AU in future seasons of Bomb Girls. (I also couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke fun at The Well of Loneliness.)
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.

“It’s summertime and the living is easy,” Kate sings absently to herself.

“Trust you to sing that when there’s frost on the windows,” Betty teases her. They’re relaxing side by side on Betty’s bed, Kate reading a movie magazine and Betty leafing through the newspaper.

“I can sing Christmas carols if you’d like,” Kate offers sweetly, knowing full well what Betty’s answer will be.

Betty pulls a face. “No fear, that’s all they’re playing on the radio nowadays. Please, please sing about summer instead!”

Kate laughs, but finds herself glancing at the clock.

Betty sees her do it, and asks, “Can you stick around much longer?”

“I’ll stay ‘til eight.” The other rooming house women, their neighbours, should mostly be finished with cooking meals and taking baths by that time, so Kate should be able to slip out of Betty’s room unnoticed.

Betty gives a sigh which might be contented or rueful. “Hard to believe this place is gonna be a ghost town a week from now,” Betty muses. At Kate’s questioning look, she goes on, “Most everybody’s leaving to see their families.”

Kate wonders whether this is Betty’s way of breaking it to her that she’s going home too. She’s not sure whether new girlfriends trump families. There’s a lot about dating a woman – dating at all, really – that’s still very new to Kate. “Will you … were you planning on going home to see your folks?”

“My plans all seem to involve sticking around here,” Betty says, putting her arm around Kate’s shoulder.

Kate can’t help feeling pleased, but finds herself asking, “Won’t your parents be disappointed?”

“Nah. There’ll be umpteen sons and wives and grandkids running around underfoot, nobody’ll even notice I’m not around. Sometimes I suspect that’s why Mom and Dad had so many, so they wouldn’t have to think too much about whichever one turned out to be the black sheep. Let no-one say Jim and Lizzie McRae ain’t practical to a fault.” Betty says it all on one note, like a comedian, but Kate feels for her.

“It’ll be nice to have the place practically to ourselves for a few days,” says Kate, trying to cheer Betty up. She’s thinking purely in terms of lazing around in front of the radiator and not having to queue for the stove, but Betty smiles in a way that says she’s thinking of something different.

“You know, we’ve got ourselves awhile ‘til eight,” Betty says quietly.

Kate suddenly feels rather lightheaded, with the way Betty’s looking at her. “Do we?”

“I’ve finished the paper,” Betty says, putting it on the bedside table. She nods at Kate’s reading material. “How’s that _Lamplight_?”

“There’s an article about Clark Gable.” Kate can feel herself starting to blush.

“Clark Gable, huh? You don’t say.”

“It’s very interesting.”

Betty moves closer. “Oh, I’ll bet. Go on, tell me about Clark Gable.”

“Well, he was born in Ohio-” Kate giggles at the feeling of Betty’s lips brushing the line of her jaw. “And, um, his favourite food is … is...”

“Mmm?” Betty starts peppering Kate’s throat with little kisses.

“You don’t give a darn about Clark Gable,” says Kate in a tone of mock disapproval, as she leans her head back to give Betty more to kiss. Her eyes flutter closed and a small smile plays around her lips.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’re gonna have to get up pretty early in the morning to make me believe you fancy Clark Gable, Betty.”

“I knew I couldn’t pull the wool over your eyes.”

“I don’t miss a trick,” Kate murmurs, before Betty’s lips capture hers. The _Lamplight_ tumbles to the floor, quite forgotten, as they slide down against the pillows.

Perhaps tonight is the night. Perhaps Kate will finally allow herself get carried away, the way people do in magazine stories about poor but honest girls who are romanced by dukes...

Betty’s hand trails up the length of Kate’s body, as warm and sure as it was on Kate’s first day at Victory Munitions, when she showed Kate how to pour the amatol. It feels lovely, so lovely to be held and touched and kissed like this. Kate wants more, she knows she does. Yet the soft rasp of Betty tugging down the zip on her dress is like a chainsaw.

“Don’t,” she says, pulling away, hating herself for it. It always happens this way. They’ve tried to make love a few times now, but every time Kate’s clothes start coming off, she freezes up and can’t enjoy herself.

“I’m sorry,” says Betty hastily. “I’ll leave.”

“But it’s your room.” Kate laughs more than she would, ordinarily.

Betty isn’t smiling. “I don’t want to force you,” she says.

“You’re not forcing me,” Kate insists. She’s not sure how much of her pounding heart is wanting, and how much is pure terror. “I’m just - I keep wanting to like it, but I can’t.”

Betty looks at her sideways. “Do you think it’s wrong?”

Kate doesn’t quite know how to answer that. She knows that almost everyone she’s ever met would think it’s wrong. She knows it’s against the law, against her religion. Yet she doesn’t think it’s wrong. That in itself is hard to reconcile, but she’s trying her best. She’s getting better all the time. But she’s worried she’s not getting better fast enough.

“Of course I don’t,” she says, because it seems like the simplest and safest thing. “We can try again.”

Betty moves away and says gruffly, “Mood’s gone.” Kate doesn’t know whether she’s relieved or disappointed.

After she lets herself out of Betty’s room, Kate goes down to the kitchen to make herself some hot milk. She hasn’t had it in years. Kate’s preferred tea since she was ten, but Mother used to make her hot milk and honey when she was small. She feels like she could use a bit of mothering right now. It’s not the same as before, though. The milk is evaporated, for one thing, and much too sweet even without honey. Mother isn’t around to talk to. Not that Kate could talk to her about this particular problem.

Aggie and Susan are in the kitchen. They nod in recognition at Kate before returning to their discussion. They’re talking about some woman they know and don’t particularly like.

“He says she’s frigid as well, on top of everything else. Hasn’t gone further than kissing since they got together,” Susan says disbelievingly. “Can you believe it? She’s twenty-seven, no spring chicken. His eye will start wandering, before long.”

Aggie gives a derisive snort. “Too right. It’s not the 1800s, for God’s sake. Sooner or later, you’ve got to give ‘em a reason to stick around. Eventually, you’ve got to give it up.”

Kate cringes as if they’re talking about her. She turns the stove off and pours the milk hastily into a mug while it’s still only lukewarm, just so she can get away.

She goes to the telephone in the front hall and pulls up a chair. She sits until her milk has gone stone cold before she has the courage to dial a number.

“Hello?” says a voice which sounds harried, but still princesslike.

“Hi, Gladys,” Kate says in a small voice.

“Oh, Kate, it’s you,” Gladys says distractedly.

Kate toys anxiously with the phone cord. “Have I called at a bad time?”

“I’m just in the middle of some very complicated cookery.”

“Sorry, Gladys, I’ll leave you to it, then-”

“No, hang on a tick. I’m never too busy for my best friend. What’s up? You sound a bit flat.”

“I suppose I’m just missing people,” Kate says, because it is at least part of the truth. “You know, Christmas and all.”

“Oh, Kate.” Gladys sounds sympathetic, but still faraway. “I know you and Betts can’t be in the same room too much, with everybody else around, but maybe you could start playing a certain record when the coast is clear, so Betty knows it’s safe to make a dash for your bedroom-”

“No, no, everything’s lovely, I swear. I’m just in a funk. I don’t know why.” Kate pauses. “Well, actually I’ve got an idea.”

“Because you miss your family?”

“That, and – other things.” Why does the rooming house always go quiet whenever Kate is about to voice something embarrassing? “It’s a bit hard to talk about. You’ll think I’m an idiot. _I_ think I’m an idiot.”

“I’m sure you’re not an idiot. Try me.”

Kate clears her throat. “Well, I … when you and James first – when you … did you find it hard when things went further than-”

“Oh, my lord, I think it’s on fire,” gasps Gladys.

Kate blinks. “Gladys?” She listens with increasing alarm to various clangs and crashes from the other end of the line, interspersed with at least two shrieks from Gladys.

Eventually, Gladys returns to the phone. “Everything is perfectly under control,” says Gladys. “But I made a bit of a mess.”

“Well, at least you’re not hurt. Is the kitchen all right?”

“Listen, I’m sorry you’re not feeling the best.” Gladys’ tone says clearly that she does not want to discuss the state of the kitchen. “Do you want to come over tomorrow, around two? You sound like you could use some tea and sympathy.”

No sooner has Kate said, “I’d like that,” than Gladys has hung up, presumably to tackle the spectacular mess she’s made of her kitchen. Once again, Kate is alone with her thoughts.

Kate is not blind any more. She knows that she likes women. She knows she’s in love with Betty. She is well aware, with every little fibre of her being, that she wants her. But it seems that’s not quite enough. Something keeps stopping her, and she doesn’t know what.

She’ll talk to Gladys about it, and everything will be just fine. She is not blind, and soon she won’t have to be afraid, either.

Still, the next afternoon, as Kate approaches the luxury apartments where Gladys is living in her fiancé’s vacated flat, she feels ridiculously conscious of her threadbare coat and homemade dress. Normally, she would try a bit harder to pull herself together, but Kate has a feeling that her self-consciousness is serving a purpose. Perhaps worrying about stupid things like her clothes is easier than admitting to herself that she’s dreading the prospect of discussing sex, even with her best friend.

Gladys shows Kate in graciously, evidently pleased to be playing hostess. “I baked,” Gladys says proudly, indicating a plate of thick, rather lopsided ginger biscuits. “I used up a week’s butter and sugar ration, but I think they turned out all right, don’t you?”

Kate nibbles at one (it’s delicious, but slightly burnt on one side), tactfully ignoring the recipe for ginger cake lying on the sideboard. Even with the mishaps, Gladys’ cooking is getting much better. From offhand remarks, Kate has learned what happened during the weeks after Gladys moved out of her parents’ mansion, when she lived on soup and buns and things from tins. Betty grew steadily more exasperated, until one day she had offered (rather forcefully, she admitted) to come over and teach Gladys to cook a proper meal.

(“The look on her face when I told her I’d teach her to cook - it was the first time I’d laughed in weeks,” Betty told Kate, later on. “I said to her, ‘I’m the only girl out of seven kids. Being a tomboy only gets you out of so much.’”)

Kate wishes she could have been present for those early cooking lessons. They sound like such fun. Gladys and Betty haven’t been terribly forthcoming with the details, but from what Kate’s picked up on, it sounds like those were some of the only fun afternoons they had, in between searching for Kate and dealing with the fallout from their separate scandals.

Whether it’s a champagne-soaked letter-writing party at the rooming house or tea and biscuits on a Sunday afternoon, Gladys always pours beverages the same way she pours amatol: with equal amounts of precision and determination. “So, what is it that’s got you so blue?” she asks, straight out. “I gather it’s something to do with Betty?”

Kate blanchs at her. It took a lot of courage just to ring the doorbell, even more to walk inside the flat, and was hoping – praying – for some small talk to ease her into this.

“Kate, I’m not going to have a fit of the vapours the minute you start talking about being a lesbian. You’ve got the wrong Witham. Mother’s the one who needs a fainting couch in every room. Well, a hangover couch, really, but we won’t go into that.”

Kate can’t help giggling. Betty always groans and buries her face in her hands whenever Gladys says the word “lesbian.” Something about the lascivious sound of the _l,_ the sibilant hiss of the _s,_ just makes Betty squirm. “Gladys!”

“Well, it’s about time somebody said it out loud. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a Bogie film, being around you and Betty, with all your double-talk.” Gladys pushes the biscuit platter nearer to Kate. “Have another biscuit – that one’s not too burnt, there you go – and tell me what’s got you down.”

Kate tries her best. “It’s hard keeping it a secret. I just want to be with her all the time, but everyone’s watching us. That makes it even harder to...”

For all that Gladys claims not to be a total innocent, she proves selectively slow on the uptake. She stares at Kate, prompting her to continue. Gladys Witham is the closest thing Kate’s ever had to a sister – a strange amalgamation of sophisticated older sister and callow younger sister – but right now, Kate feels absurdly shy of her.

It’s too hard. Kate sighs and attempts to paste a cheerful expression on her face. “It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. Far from it. We have so much fun together.”

Gladys laughs. “I should say so. You must have a lot of fun indeed, getting to sleep together as much as you want without having to worry about anybody getting pregnant.”

Gladys has brought it up. She’s said it out loud, so why does Kate still feel so awkward? Kate fidgets. “We haven’t actually … done that, yet.”

“Whyever not?”

“All sorts of reasons,” Kate mumbles.

“Can you not get two minutes alone at that rooming house?” asks Gladys sympathetically. “Because you can come here, if privacy is the issue.”

Kate is fairly sure she’s gone the same colour as her hair. “It’s not that. We can be alone if we put our minds to it. It’s just that whenever we try, I keep … freezing.”

“Freezing?”

Kate doesn’t feel especially willing or able to elaborate on that. Instead, she asks, “Do people always like it right away? Making love, I mean.”

“I’m hardly an expert, Kate. James and I only got to do it a few times before he left. I think I’m barely on two hands, to tell the truth.”

The quantity of Gladys’ trysts with James is not what Kate is interested in. She asks, “But did you enjoy it, right from when you started?”

Gladys can’t help smiling. Kate can see her remembering, see her missing James. “I did.”

 _So it’s true. There’s something wrong with me,_ Kate thinks miserably.

Gladys sees her face fall. “Kate, I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t be overcome. Everyone’s brought up to think that sex is dirty, but somehow people do it anyway. It’ll happen for you, especially now that – well, now you know what you want.”

 _But it’s not about me liking women,_ Kate desperately wants to say. _I think I’d be this way even with a man. I’m worried Betty won’t know I love her unless I do it. I want to, but something keeps stopping me and I don’t know what..._

Leaving the apartment complex under a darkening sky, Kate is thoroughly fed up with trying to explain herself. She needs to be someplace where she can be with others who are in the same boat as her … someplace she can feel normal. There was a time, not so long ago, when that invariably meant being home with her family, singing hymns and folk songs while her brothers accompanied her, followed by an early night. Nowadays, being with people like herself is more likely to mean the Tangiers Club.

Kate grew up thinking of herself as a real homebody. It was almost frightening, a year and some ago, being away from her family for the first time and finding out how much she loved dancing and making new friends and yes, even drinking. She still gets nervous sometimes, of crowds and new people, but on the whole, Kate loves being out on the town. It is one of the biggest differences between the person she is now, and the person she never wants to be again.

So Kate goes out. She ignores the niggling part of her that frets about the very idea of going out to a seedy nightclub on a Sunday. She revels in the fact that she can approach any table in the whole of Tangiers just as easily as can be, and greet the people as friends, and trust that they know her name, that she’s a singer, and that she’s Betty’s girlfriend. To prove to herself that she is well and truly Kate Andrews now, Kate picks the queerest table in the joint, the one with Betty’s friend Carla, Carla’s girlfriend June, and a whole gaggle of men. The men are all listening to Raymond, a neat fellow with painted fingernails and a loud voice, who is by far the most popular person at the table.

“Christmas!” Raymond says, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Don’t talk to me about it! It’s nothing but trouble!”

Carla snickers. “Is the beauty parlour having a run on henna? I told you the stuff was gonna get dear.”

“Ha, _ha,_ Miss Prentiss. But no, my hair’s got nothing to do with it. Ma’s on the phone all day and all night, saying, ‘But Raymond, why won’t you come to midnight Mass with me this Christmas? Your brothers both off fighting, you’re gonna make me go all alone?’” Raymond shakes his head. “I haven’t put one toe inside any church since the day I first kissed a man. I don’t see how any queer person could believe in God. Because that way, you’d have to think God created us to be miserable. You’d have to be kind of sick in the head, to believe there’s a God that hates us enough to make us queer.”

Kate is taken aback – more so when everyone around the table starts nodding and agreeing with him.Loving God is the one thing Kate’s father never, ever had to force her to do. It comes to Kate naturally as breathing. She’s never in her life thought that God wanted her to be unhappy. She used to think (still fears, sometimes) that she was unhappy because she wasn’t following God’s path, and that she would be happy if only she could be the person her father wanted her to be. She realised, slowly, that God’s plan for her did not include being beaten, and feeling terrible about herself all the time. That’s in her past. She’s Kate Andrews again, Kate Andrews for the rest of her days. All that awfulness was Marion Rowley’s lot in life, not hers.

She’s never felt the least bit sick about believing in God. When things were at their darkest, trusting that God would love her even if nobody else did was the only thing that got her through. That was what got her back to Toronto, back to -

“Hey,” says a low voice in her ear. She feels Betty’s jacket sleeve brushing against her bare arm. “Sorry I took an age. The line for the ladies’ room stretched around the block. I think I even saw a few fellas waiting.”

“Which is odd, since they usually prefer to do it standing,” quips someone, and everyone laughs. Everyone except Kate.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she says, giving Betty a distracted peck on the cheek.

“What’s up? You look a bit flushed.”

“I’m not overheated, I’m just fine,” says Kate.

“Well, then, do you want to dance?” Betty asks gamely. It makes Kate love her so much. She knows how awkward Betty feels on the dance floor, but she still asks Kate every time they go out, because she knows how Kate loves dancing.

Yet mingled with Kate’s rush of fondness for her girlfriend is a feeling very like shame. She’s having trouble looking Betty in the face.

“I’m on in a minute,” says Kate. “But I’ll dance with you after.”

Truthfully, it’s at least five minutes until she’s due to be onstage with the band, but she can’t stay here. She knows that Betty doesn’t believe in God either, and she’s never had a problem with that, but she’s suddenly so scared about what will happen when Betty joins the conversation. She doesn’t think she’d be able to stand it, if Betty started saying that a person can’t be queer and believe in God at the same time. She knows in her heart that that’s true for Betty – that part of the reason Betty doesn’t believe is because she’s known what she is since she was a tiny little girl, and she’s always felt excluded because of it. But Kate honestly feels like she would burst into tears if Betty were to agree with Raymond, and say that queer people have to choose between God and being in love.

Kate doesn’t want to choose. She’s made enough tough choices to last a lifetime. Why can’t people ever be allowed to be more than one thing?

“All right, Church Mouse?” Leon asks in a low voice when Kate climbs onstage.

“What makes you ask that?” She wants to perform now, not talk about what’s bothering her.

“You look like you’re gunning to slap somebody.”

“It’s nothing. People saying silly things. I’m _fine._ ” Kate approaches the microphone. “Mr Riley, if I may, I’d like to sing this first song for my baby,” she says into the mike. This way of talking doesn’t come naturally to her, after twenty-four years of being shouted at every time she unconsciously repeated the slang she overheard in the street, but she finds it easier to do when she’s onstage.

Leon grins. “Boys, let’s give her some swing.”

She sways as they play the introduction. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the table she just left, people reaching over and tapping Betty’s shoulder, hissing comments, tittering, some of grabbing partners and starting to dance – and Betty looking like she’s been lit up from inside.

Growing up, Kate was always told that there was nothing worse than wanting people to look at you. Nobody ever mentioned anything about sharing a look. _Sharing a look,_ Kate thinks, _is just about the nicest thing in the world._

“Who do you think is coming to town? You’ll never guess who. Lovable, huggable Emily Brown – ‘Miss Brown’ to you,” Kate sings. “What if the rain comes pattering down? My heaven is blue. Can it be sending me Emily Brown – ‘Miss Brown’ to you?”

Kate sings, and all at once, her world is full of magic. She used to think it was a sin, the sin of pride, to feel so happy when she sang. When she was a girl, her father was quick to stop her singing if he thought she was too pleased with the sound of her own voice. She was well trained by the time she was in double digits, only singing on cue, or when she was alone. The consequences were dreadful if she ever forgot.

It’s not pride, though. It’s just joy. It was wretched to realise that she’d been kept from a thing as simple, as utterly necessary as joy, all her life. Kate’s never really yearned to be a movie star like Gladys or Vera did when they were young, but she often thinks that life would be so fine if only she could live in a musical, and sing everything she feels for the rest of her life. She would be so eloquent, there. She could feel joy every minute.

She gears up for the big finish. “Why do you think she’s coming to town? Just wait and you’ll see. Lovable little Miss Brown to you is ‘baby’ to me!” Everybody in the audience who knows she’s with Betty gives her a special cheer. There’s nothing quite like having people cheer her for singing about a woman.

She sings two more Billie Holiday standards – _My Man,_ which makes everyone who knows about her and Betty laugh, and _I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,_ which is seasonally appropriate, at least. When she leaves the stage and rejoins her table, Betty says, “You were great,” and kisses Kate right in front of everybody. Kate returns the kiss, but finds herself reddening. She’s still not totally used to doing this sort of thing in private, let alone in front of strangers.

“I had no idea you were the singer everybody talks about! Nobody would ever think it to look at you. You sure do look different onstage,” Raymond says jovially. “But down here, why, you’re as tiny as can be.”

Kate doesn’t feel tiny. She always feels so immense with joy whenever she runs offstage into Betty’s arms. Why is Raymond talking down to her like this?

“You’re just a scrap of a thing, but you’ve sure got a big, beautiful voice. Any relation to the Andrews Sisters?”

“No,” says Kate, shaking her head. She has an urge to snap that she’s not related to anybody named Andrews, just to spite him. She knows she ought to accept his teasing and his compliments with good humour, but she can’t help feeling stung about what he said earlier. _I won’t be teased by anybody who thinks I’m sick in the head,_ she thinks fiercely.

Raymond smiles indulgently at Kate, the star of Tangiers who he can reduce to a scrap with just a word, just a look. “Well, if that ain’t it, where’d you learn to belt like that, dollface?”

“I’ve been singing in the church since I was four years old,” says Kate curtly, before turning pointedly to Betty. “May I buy you a drink?”

Kate knows she’s not doing the right thing. She knows full well that women who wear dresses are supposed to let women who wear pants get the drinks. But Kate and Betty work the exact same job; they get paid the same wages. Why shouldn’t they take turns? Kate has loved the Tangiers Club since the moment she first entered it, but sometimes Kate doesn’t understand the way things work here at all. Sometimes, the way things work here have a remarkable way of bringing Kate down from the high of performing faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

“Sure, I’d like that,” says Betty, valiantly ignoring the snickers coming from various points around their table.

Waiting at the bar for Betty’s whiskey sour, Kate wonders what on earth is the matter with her. She came to Tangiers to perform, to have fun and be with the woman she loves, not find excuses to put an entire dance floor between herself and Betty.

 _I’ve got to stop being such a pill,_ she thinks as she pays for Betty’s drink. _I’ll give Betty her whiskey, and kiss her on the lips in front of everyone, and ask her to dance with me._ Maybe she’ll even apologise to Raymond, for being so short with him. He did compliment her singing, even if it was in a backhanded sort of way. He wasn’t to know that Kate goes to church every Sunday. Perhaps it is unusual. After all, Tangiers is always packed on Saturday nights, right into the small hours of the morning, with no indication that anybody is going to Sunday service.

 _What if what he said was true?_ Kate is swept up by a creeping panic. _Maybe there is no such thing as a queer person who believes in God-_

“Excuse me, sir,” Kate says distractedly, trying to sidestep a man of around forty, standing too close behind her at the bar.

“Sir?” he repeats. He regards her incredulously, and Kate sees that there’s no trace of stubble on his cheek. His black suspenders trace the unmistakable outline of a woman’s figure. “Name’s Pearl, actually.”

“Oh, golly, I’m so sorry,” Kate stammers, mortified. “I’m just off in a world of my own, and-”

“Golly gosh,” mimics Pearl, regarding Kate. “It’s no skin off my nose.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “Have a nice evening.”

Pearl steps in front of Kate again, preventing her from escaping. “No, hang on a tick. Since I’ve got you on your own, I might as well ask. What _are_ you?”

The question stops Kate in her tracks. “I don’t know what you mean,” she says slowly.

Sneering, Pearl says, “Isn’t that just the trouble? I mean, hugging and kissing on another girl, cosying up to Leon Riley, singin’ _Miss Brown To You_ and then _My Man_? The way you carry on, how is anybody supposed to know what you _are_?”

Kate bristles. “Leon and the band pick the songs. I just sing them. My girlfriend is waiting for me, so if you’ll excuse me-”

“So you are sleeping with her, then?”

Kate falters. She hates herself for faltering. It ought to be nobody’s business. She falters all the same, and Pearl gives a strange crow of triumph.

“I thought so. You’re just playing around. Girls like you are hypocrites, stringing proper bulldaggers along while all the men are overseas. Can’t stand going a few months without any attention, can you?”

“I’m not like that,” Kate whispers, but for all Pearl acknowledges what she’s said, she might not have spoken at all.

“You look like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, and all the while you’re gettingyour jollies from keeping everybody guessing. Well, I just hope your so-called girlfriend’s ready for a world of heartbreak.”

Betty has spotted that Kate is in distress, and she’s making her way through the crowd. Kate ought to just shove Pearl aside and rejoin Betty, forget all this unpleasantness, but she finds herself rooted to the spot.

“Is she bothering you?” asks Betty, taking Kate’s arm.

Pearl chuckles. “Don’t worry, sport, I ain’t making a move on your girl. Seems it’s not my kind you’ve got to worry about.”

Betty swears at her, short ugly words she learned from her older brothers long ago. Usually Kate flinches whenever Betty uses words like that, even in her defence. Yet Kate feels like using them too when Pearl looks pityingly at her Betty and says, “I’m not the enemy here. Good luck to you,” before ambling away laughing.

“What did she say to you?” Betty asks. “Kate?”

“I think I’d like to go home now,” Kate says, sounding just as small as Raymond said she was. “I don’t feel well.”

“Okay,” Betty says. “We’ll get your coat, and we’ll be on the next street car home.”

“I’m supposed to go on with the band in an hour,” Kate frets.

“Well, if you don’t wanna be here, then you don’t wanna. Leon and the boys will live. I’ll get somebody to tell him you’re sick, it’s no problem.” Betty wraps an arm around Kate and presses a kiss into her hair. Kate leans gratefully against her.

As they wait for the street car, Betty tries to get her to talk about what happened. Kate keeps insisting that it’s nothing, nothing, nothing. Eventually, Betty gives up, and Kate is left with her thoughts.

Kate does like men. It’s something she doesn’t mention much, any more. It seems inappropriate somehow, to like men even a little, now that she’s with Betty. That doesn’t change the fact that she does feel some attraction to them, on occasion. Kate likes looking at them (she can definitely tell when a man is handsome, unlike Betty, who claims to have no aptitude for that sort of thing) and even idly wonders what it would be like to kiss a man. She doesn’t feel particularly sad at the idea of never kissing one, though. She’s in love with Betty. If Kate has her way, Betty is the only one she’s kissing for the rest of her life.

But they haven’t slept together yet. People can tell it just by looking at her, because of the way she dresses, the way she goes pink when Betty kisses her in front of people. They think that because she’s somewhat attracted to men, and because she believes in God, she can’t really love Betty.

She thinks about that woman Aggie and Susan were talking about, how her boyfriend’s eye is going to start wandering if she doesn’t _give it up,_ and Kate can’t help but shudder.

They hop down from the street car and walk toward the rooming house. It’s a starless winter night, very quiet after the heat and hustle of Tangiers. Usually, Kate sings when it’s quiet like this. She doesn’t feel much like singing now.

“I’m sorry Pearl ruined your evening,” Betty says, after awhile. “I wish you’d tell me what she said. Carla reckons Pearl gets bitter around really pretty girls when she’s had a few.”

“I don’t much want to talk about it, Betty.”

“Even if I solemnly swear not to put her lights out the next time I see her?”

“Even then. Speaking of ruined evenings, I’m sorry about yours.”

“Don’t even worry about it. It’s never a ruined night when I get to hear you sing.” Betty looks at Kate like she’s proud that Kate is her girlfriend, like Kate isn’t a total disgrace. It makes Kate feel even worse. Of course, that could just be because they’ve reached the rooming house steps.

Kate bites her lip. This is always her least favourite part of any evening, the part when they have to pretend they’ve gone out separately.

“You go in first,” Betty says, like always.

“But I went first last time,” Kate protests, wishing that her teeth weren’t chattering.

“I’m dressed warmer than you.”

“But-” It doesn’t seem fair. Betty is just as small as Kate, underneath her jacket and trousers. She probably feels the cold just as much. Surely it would be fairer for them to take turns walking back into the rooming house first. Surely it would be fairest if they could walk in together, hand in hand, like every single other couple in the universe.

“I’ll be inside in a minute,” Betty insists. “Two minutes, tops.”

Kate fixes Betty’s scarf. “Don’t stay out here too long. You’ll catch your death.”

“McRaes don’t get sick,” Betty says haughtily. She catches hold of Kate’s gloved fingers and kisses them. “Go on!”

Reluctantly, Kate starts to head up the steps. “You’ll be just two minutes, right?”

“One and a half,” Betty promises her.

Kate blows her a kiss. She wants to call out, _“I love you,”_ but can’t be sure they won’t be overheard. So she settles for, “Sweet dreams.”

“G’night,” returns Betty. Somehow, Kate’s brave girlfriend looks very small, standing out in the snow all alone as Kate goes indoors first.

It is a full ten minutes after Kate reaches her room that she hears Betty climbing the steps to the third floor. She pictures Betty futilely stamping her feet and breathing into her cupped hands as she stands in a snowdrift for ten whole minutes.

Being in love ought to make everything better. Isn’t that the way it always works in the movies? When Kate is around Betty, she feels like the life has been breathed back into her. But when Kate has to contend with all these other things – the sneaking around, and the people who know treating her like she’s so small because her girlfriend is tough and wears trousers, and the constant worrying that there must be something wrong with wanting to kiss women and believe in God at the same time – it’s like the joy she’s searched for all her life is being leached out. She knows she wants Betty. It’s almost alarming how worked up Kate gets, thinking about Betty when she’s alone. So why does she keep freezing when she’s in her girlfriend’s arms?

Kate has no frame of reference for any of this. There are no films about women in love, no magazine columns she can glance through for tips, and very few people she can ask for advice. Yet she figures that by most people’s estimation, she must be a simply appalling girlfriend, never doing the right thing, always shaming Betty in front of people. Kate wants to be good – it was all she was brought up to want – but she’s got less idea _how_ to be good than she’s ever had in her life.

 _Never mind what you want,_ she thinks. _You know you want her, and that ought to be all that matters. It would be all that mattered, for anybody who wasn’t as broken inside as you are. You didn’t give up so much, learn so much, grow so much, just to wreck everything. Do you want to lose her now?_

Kate doesn't think anything much as her feet hit the floor, as she peeps around her doorway and heads for the staircase up to the third floor. She knows what she's about to do, so she can't let herself think, in case she loses her nerve.

Despite all her bravado, Kate finds herself lingering in Betty's doorway for a moment, just watching. Betty is sitting on her bed, frowning as she thumbs irritably through a book. Aside from the newspaper, Betty is not an avid reader. She didn’t grow up around books, and she left school at thirteen. Even so, Betty's the smartest person Kate’s ever met. She’s so forthright, so quick with her words. Kate still goes all girly when she remembers Betty telling off the floor boys for putting those disgusting comments in Gladys’ suggestion box.

Kate shuts the door behind her, which makes Betty look up. The annoyance on her face melts away at the sight of Kate. “Well, this is a nice surprise!”

“Hopefully not too much of a surprise,” Kate says, not moving away from the door. “What are you up to?”

Betty holds up the book. It has a plain brown cover, with the title, _The Well of Loneliness,_ picked out in black. “ _The Sink of Solitude._ Gladys loaned it to me about ... eleven months ago. It’s about inverts. Her way of pledging support.”

Kate raises her eyebrows. Betty doesn’t say “invert,” she talks about people being “in the life” or “that way.” “Sounds swell.”

Betty has marked her page with a bus ticket. It is less than halfway through. “As you can see, I’m racin’ through it. There’d better be one hell of a love scene soon, or I’m pitching it straight out the window.”

Kate waits slightly too long to laugh. Betty winces.

“Dullest thing I ever read in my life,” Betty adds hastily. “I flick through it when I’m trying to drop off at night.”

“You’re not going to sleep now, are you?”

“Might iron my work clothes before I hit the sack. Why, what’s up?”

Kate’s response is to pull Betty’s doorknob directly upward. The click of the door locking sounds deafening.

“You want to talk or something?” Betty asks, eyeing her.

“I just want to be with you.” Kate’s voice goes up at the end of the sentence, making it sound like a question.

“Well, come on over.” Betty pats the space beside her. “You know being with you is my favourite thing.”

Kate sits down beside her. _I’m Kate now,_ she thinks. _I’m Kate Andrews, not Marion any more. I need to show her that I want this, that she doesn’t have to worry. I need to get through it so it can be good later._

She steels herself, then kisses Betty hard on the mouth. Kate leads Betty’s hands to pertinent places on her body and blurts out, “Touch me.”

“Kate-”

“Please do it,” she murmurs, unable to meet Betty’s eyes.

“Well, that’s romantic,” says Betty, sounding rather nervous.

“I’m not good at this,” Kate says. “It’s all new to me. But I do want it, I swear. I just – I need – please do it to me.”

“Are you sure?” Betty sounds dubious but also hopeful. Kate has never done this before, has never come to Betty’s bedroom of her own accord and asked Betty to touch her.

Kate can’t quite form the word _yes._ Instead, she kisses Betty until Betty stops asking if she’s sure.

Kate thinks, _I want this, I want this, I want this,_ over and over. For awhile it seems to work. At least, she manages to take off her clothes, and Betty’s too. She makes the correct noises and moves in the right way. She doesn’t know whether it feels good. It’s not important whether it feels good. What’s important is doing what is expected of her, so that people will know she loves Betty.

“You’re so lovely,” she hears Betty say, from somewhere near the region of her waist. “Oh, Kate, you’re so, so beautiful.” That makes Kate feel nice – sort of like she’s blushing all the way through her body – and for a moment she thinks that perhaps this could go all right, after all.

But then she thinks, _I’m not lovely. My scars aren’t lovely, and the things my father did to me weren’t lovely, and the things I said to you when I left last winter weren’t lovely. Why are you lying to me? Father always said this is what would happen, that people would lie to me to get what they wanted-_

Kate falls back into herself, like falling from the ceiling. She’s more naked than she’s ever been in all her life. She doesn’t know how she got that way. It’s all wrong and Kate didn’t want it to be like this.

She gasps. It is not a pleasurable sound. It sounds like someone being shoved underwater, fighting to breathe. Kate never learned to swim.

“Get off me,” she says suddenly. “Get off!”

Dimly, she hears Betty ask, “What’s the matter?” There’s a part of her that wants to just collapse into her girlfriend’s arms and be comforted – but another, more pressing part just wants to run.

She drags her dress on, buttoning it haphazardly, and gathers up her bra, slip and underwear, screwing them into a bundle which she clutches to her chest. If anybody sees her, Kate will look horribly suspicious, leaving Betty’s room in such a state of disarray, but Kate can’t … she just can’t.

Betty looks stricken. “Kate, tell me what I did wrong.”

“It’s not you,” says Kate. “I have to go.”

She makes a dash from the room. Betty can’t follow right away, because she’s stark naked, but five minutes later, as Kate lies shivering on her bed in her room, she hears footsteps outside her door.

“Kate? Kate?” There is a pause, and Betty says, “Honey, please let me in.” It makes Kate want to cry. They don’t call each other by endearments when other people are around, it’s much too risky. Betty must be so worried about her.

“I’m tired,” she calls, her voice cracking audibly. “I need to go to sleep.”

In her mind’s eye, Kate can see the expressions flitting across Betty’s face. Concern, hurt, confusion. Neither of them can say any of the things that are on their minds. Kate has closed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Deals with similar themes to my other future!fic, Musical, and features a reference to my pre-show fic, In the Life. Takes place in December 1942. Written in the break between Season 1 and 2, so will most likely become AU in future seasons of Bomb Girls.
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.

Throughout the morning shift, Kate rolls paint onto the newly scrubbed bomb casings before hanging them on hooks. She keeps sneaking glances down the line, past Edith and Gladys and almost every other girl on Blue Shift, to where Betty stands, eyes fixed on her work. Kate’s brave, tough girlfriend, the best worker at Vic Mu. Well. Former girlfriend, more like. She can’t possibly still be Kate’s girlfriend, after what happened last night.

Mingled with Kate’s sorrow is a certain kind of warmth that spreads all through her when she remembers Betty telling her she was beautiful. A few seconds will pass before Kate remembers how no-one could ever want a girlfriend like her, a girlfriend who is so sheltered, so damaged, who ices over like the Alps every time someone tries to make love to her. Kate thought she was well numbed to pain of all kinds, but this feels so raw.

 _She’s never going to look at me again. She’s never going to kiss me again,_ Kate thinks each time she sees that flash of gold out of the corner of her eye. She has a terrible job not to cry.

At lunchtime, Kate can’t face the canteen, so she takes her food into the dank women’s bathroom. Her heart skips a beat when she hears someone’s stout work shoes splashing in the puddles on the floor, and a voice calling her name. After a moment of mixed joy and panic, she realises that it’s Gladys who’s come looking for her, not Betty.

“Kate?” Gladys squints at her in the gloom. “What on earth are you doing in here?”

“I just wanted some alone time.” Kate sits on the edge of the sink, swinging her feet disconsolately over the damp tiles.

“I can see that. Nobody else stops in here for longer than thirty seconds if they can possibly help it. It seems you and Betts are both in need of some peace and quiet. She’s hiding in the change room. Why aren’t you being quiet together, hmm?” When Kate doesn’t answer, Gladys barrels on, “Are you two all right? Quite apart from you both looking miserable, this is the first time I’ve seen you avoiding each other since you got together.”

Kate chews her lip. “We tried again last night.”

Gladys eyes her. “It didn’t go well, I take it.”

Kate shakes her head mournfully.

“What happened?” Sourly, Kate imagines what Gladys must _really_ be thinking: _How badly wrong could sex possibly go, when you’re both women?_

“We tried … what you and James did, your first time.”

“And?”

“I pushed her off and ran out of the room.”

“Oh, Kate. Why?”

Kate knows why. At least, she thinks she does. But she keeps thinking about, _“Sooner or later, you’ve got to give ‘em a reason to stick around”_ and _“I don’t see how any queer person could believe in God”_ and _“How is anybody supposed to know what you are?”_ She keeps feeling miserable and lost whenever she remembers those moments, and it makes it even harder to think about the topic at hand.

So she says, “I don’t know. It just happened.”

“There are marriage guidance pamphlets at my doctor’s office. I could pilfer some for you,” Gladys offers.

“They’re all for men and women, aren’t they?” Kate asks hopelessly.

“How different can it be?”

Kate remembers how surprised she was to find out that Gladys is actually two years younger than she is. It’s incredibly easy to forget, most of the time. Then there are moments like these. Moments where, despite all her education and experience and worldliness, Gladys just doesn’t know what it is to be poor, to have nowhere to turn, or to like women the way you’re supposed to like men. These are the only times that Kate feels older.

When Kate doesn’t answer, Gladys pats her arm. “I’m sure it’ll all come good in the end. You do know what you want, underneath it all, so-”

There’s that phrase again, that assumption. Kate wants to round on her and snap, _“Nobody gives a damn what I want. Why should they? Why should_ I? _I’m nothing.”_

She tries to say something that sounds slightly less angry. “Gladys, I left my family again because I wanted to. I came back here to work because I wanted to. I let myself be in love because I wanted to. It’s time for me to stop being so selfish and think about other people for once … time to be grateful for what I’ve got. If I’m not grateful, everything will go wrong, again.”

It’s clear from Gladys’ face that, despite her best efforts, Kate has managed to come out with something outlandish anyway. Gladys stares disbelievingly at Kate. “Kate, you know that sex isn’t something you do to show that you’re _grateful,_ don’t you?”

It does sound rather stupid when Gladys puts it like that. Kate can’t help but feel a little resentful, of having her problems made to sound so small, so easily fixed.

“No wonder you’re having trouble. I can’t think of anything in the world less sexy than the idea of having to kiss someone out of obligation, never mind going all the way. That’s what you do when your great-aunt gives you a ghastly frock for your birthday, not what you do when you’re in love.”

Gladys still doesn’t understand. It’s not just that. It’s all sorts of things. But, Kate admits, it’s probably the closest Gladys is going to get to properly understanding, so she nods slowly.

“Did I ever tell you about what it was like before James and I first made love?” Gladys asks.

Kate shrugs. “Sort of.” She knows that James and Gladys were engaged, blissfully in love, saving themselves for their wedding night – and yet, Gladys fooled around with Lewis Pine, and James had an affair with Hazel. It didn’t really make much sense to Kate, then, but she assumed that was just how rich people went about these things.

“I wanted us to go all the way – or at the very least, further than kissing and petting. I thought if I fell pregnant, then we could just bump up the wedding and then make out that the baby was a little premature. I’m glad, now, that we didn’t, because if I had gotten pregnant, I certainly couldn’t have come to work here, not even as a secretary. But it wasn’t so much about that, as the fact that I kept telling him I was ready, but James kept insisting that I wasn’t.

“Sometimes I used to think that maybe there must be something wrong with me, wanting it, especially if my fiancé seemed to think I shouldn’t. He’s a man, he should know, right? They’re the ones with libidos, after all. We women are just meant to lie back and think of England.”

Kate hasn’t the foggiest idea what a libido is, but she nods anyway.

“Of course, when James said that I wasn’t ready, what he meant was that he couldn’t think of me that way, because it’s supposed to be wrong for women to really want it. That’s why he stepped out with Hazel, in the end. It was absolutely wretched. It wasn’t fair on anybody, this stupid notion that I wasn’t supposed to want to sleep with the man I had agreed to _marry,_ for God’s sake.

Gladys’ eyes shine as she says, “I’m a grown woman, and I want what I want. I’m not ashamed. If people weren’t so ridiculous, with all their double standards, I’d tell the whole world about it. When James accepted that about me, we were finally equal. I can’t tell you how exciting that was. All my life, I’d been waiting to be equal to somebody else like that.”

Kate can see how hugely important that was to Gladys – how important it is for her, too. Still, she points out, “It’s not the same problem.”

“It’s probably more similar than most people would think,” says Gladys with dignity. “We’ve all got our battles, Kate.” Gladys glances around distastefully at their murky surroundings. “Look, come to the lunch room. I can feel myself getting consumption just breathing the air in here.”

Kate nods. She leaves the bathroom with Gladys, but doesn’t join the conversation in the lunch room. She’s lost in thought. Even if Gladys will never fully understand where Kate’s coming from, something she said struck a chord. People are the same deep down. It’s what Kate’s always believed. It’s what allows her to befriend people as different to her as Gladys or Leon or even Betty. If Gladys can be brave, can be more than what she appears, can be equal to the one she loves, then perhaps so can Kate.

(Kate knows a lot more about having to fight, about having to be brave, than the Raymonds or Pearls of the world could ever guess.)

 _I know what I have to do,_ she thinks. _It’s not going to be easy, but it’s what I want._

At shift’s end, Betty does not join the rest of the Blue Shift workers in the showers. Instead, she volunteers to run the coveralls down to the laundry. Kate hangs around in the change room for as long as she can, but eventually has to leave.

She’s not admitting defeat. Kate leaves the factory, but stands just outside the front gate. She waits there for ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, with snowflakes milling around her feet. _I’ll stand here all night if I have to._ She does not think it with grim determination, more with a kind of calm. _I’m just as strong as anybody else. I can wait you out._ There is something heartening about proving to herself that she’s just as capable of waiting in the snow as Betty is.

Finally, Betty appears, wandering down the ramp, past the smoking station and across the yard, as if she’s hopelessly lost. It’s not the way Betty is supposed to walk. Kate stays quiet until Betty drifts through the gate.

“Hi,” calls Kate, rather more loudly than is strictly necessary.

Betty stops dead in her tracks. “Hey.”

They regard each other. Kate has a sudden memory of the way Betty looked a year ago, after their fiasco of a first kiss. She fights the urge to bite her lip or shake her head, to try and get rid of the mental image. She can’t let herself do anything that makes her look like she’s in two minds about this.

“I waited for you,” she says.

“Oh.” Betty twists the strap of her purse through her fingers. “Then you still want-”

“Of course I do.”

“- to ride the street car?”

“That too,” says Kate.

At that moment, Kate realises – and knows that Betty is realising, too – that neither of them wants to break things off. Which, she reflects, does not necessarily mean everything is all right, but it does mean that what happened last night was not quite the deal-breaker they both thought it was.

“Okay,” says Betty, and Kate can see the hope and confusion wrestling inside her. “Let’s go, then.”

The street car is emptier than their usual one. They take a seat near the back, without speaking. They would probably be able to get away with holding hands, at least for a couple of stops, but Betty has her hands folded in her lap. It looks _wrong_ on her, that stiff posture, those primly clasped hands. Kate wonders, briefly, whether they’ve gone back in time. Perhaps it’s really a year ago, before their first kiss on the piano bench at Tangiers, before Kate had the words to say what she has inside her.

Kate decides to test Betty. She needs to know that they are in the now, that they haven’t gone backwards. “So, how far are you into _The Sink of Solitude_?”

Betty’s head jerks. She looks at Kate for a long moment, then glances around her, before saying slowly, “You know, it’s hard to tell. Stephen Gordon tends to spend a lot of the time whining about being rich and not being under any pressure to get married. I keep losing my place.”

“Surely Gladys wouldn’t have loaned you a completely dull book?”

“Well, maybe it makes more sense to her, being well off.” Betty thinks for a moment. “I liked the parts when Stephen was a kid, with a crush on the maid. I went off Stephen in a big way, after sh- after Stephen grew up. You’ve never heard of anyone so miserable in all your life.”

Kate nods. She says slowly, “A lot of the second floor girls are going out dancing tonight.”

Betty seems unsure what to do with her face. “Are you going along?”

“No, I thought I’d stay in.” Kate forces herself to meet Betty’s gaze. “After they’re gone, you could come down to my room for a spell.”

“Your room?” Kate can see her thinking, _But how will you bolt out of your own bedroom?_

“Yes,” says Kate firmly. “Say around nine? It’ll be nice and quiet, then, so we can talk.”

She sees the trepidation on Betty’s face. She doesn’t know whether Kate plans to make another attempt at offering herself, or break things off for good. Kate’s not quite sure either. She knows she doesn’t want to end things, but there’s a lot that can happen between blindly repeating last night’s catastrophe and telling them you never want to see them again. Kate hopes that’s the case, anyway.

At nine on the dot, there is a knock at her door. She welcomes Betty in, and once the door is closed, Kate kisses her, half on the cheek and half on her lips. She steps away before Betty can deepen or even return the kiss, to change the radio station, leaving Betty standing in the middle of the room.

“Anything good on the radio?” Betty asks with a forced casualness.

“Music for the forces, mostly. Make yourself comfy on the bed, won’t you?” Kate winces a bit, wondering if that sounds like the beginning of another poorly thought out attempt at seduction. She fiddles exaggeratedly with the radio dial. “I heard you spent lunchtime in the change room.”

Betty shrugs. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

Kate looks over her shoulder at Betty. “I hid in the women’s bathroom.”

“Geez, if I’d have known, I’d have offered to swap. That place is vile. I’m surprised you didn’t get typhus.”

“Well, time will tell,” says Kate, before hearing a soothingly familiar voice on one of the stations. She’s not quite sure where the conversation should go from here, so she turns up the radio and sings instead. “A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces, an airline ticket to romantic places,” Kate sings along with Billie Holiday. “Still, my heart has wings. These foolish things remind me of you...”

She likes the first line of that song, the part about cigarettes and lipstick. It makes her think of Betty. Lots of Billie’s songs make her think of Betty, actually. One of Kate’s favourites is _Miss Brown to You,_ because Billie’s singing about a woman. It makes her feel less alone, listening to that song. Music always has.

She looks up to find Betty staring at her like she’s new and beautiful. Kate can admit to herself that she likes it, now. Yet when she asks, “Betty, what are you looking at?” there’s an edge to her words which is very serious.

Betty ducks her head. “It does things to me.”

“What does?”

“You know.” Betty looks up, but it seems to be quite an effort. “When you sing.”

“Oh.” Kate switches off the radio and puts on a record, an Ethel Waters one, to give herself time to collect her thoughts. The strains of _I Got Rhythm_ fill the room. The song doesn’t feel quite right, but she’s stalled long enough, now.

She sits down beside Betty. “I think about you when I sing,” Kate says honestly. “Even if the song’s about a man. Which – I don’t mean that I think of you as a man, or anything. I just think about you so much that every love song sounds like it’s about you.”

A slow smile blooms across Betty’s face. It’s quite the loveliest thing Kate’s ever seen. When Betty speaks, her tone is embarrassed and teasing. “I think about _you_ when you sing. How’s that for a coincidence?”

Kate nudges her. “You always act so tough.” Kate’s eyes ask _Why?_ as she looks at Betty. Then she asks, “What do you think about me, when I sing?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Betty beckons her. “You’ll have to let me whisper it.”

Kate appreciates being allowed to pretend that they are whispering purely for the romance of it, not because the walls are so thin and they face dreadful consequences if they are discovered. She offers Betty her ear, and Betty says in an undertone, “When you sing, it makes me want to kiss you all over.”

“Oh, Betty, I want you to.” It comes out sounding like Kate is about to cry, and she hates herself for it. “I do. I’m sorry about last night.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” says Betty, and yet she moves almost imperceptibly away from Kate. It feels like being slapped.

“Talk to me,” pleads Kate. “Tell me, please.”

“Tell you what?”

“Anything.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

Kate steels herself and asks, “What was it like, your first time … you know, with a woman?”

Betty shakes her head. “It was a real long time ago.”

“I still want to know.” _I need to know if this is hard for everybody. I need to know if there’s something wrong with me._

Betty sighs. A long moment goes by, before she starts to speak. “She didn’t care about me. I didn’t really care about her either.” At Kate’s shocked look, Betty concedes, “S’pose that’s not quite true. We weren’t in love, but we could have a laugh together. I cared what she thought of me. We ended up sleeping together for about a year. I didn’t get on too great with other girls back then, so I guess I must’ve liked her, to want to be around her that long. Hurt like a sonofabitch when she called me sick and said she never wanted to see me again. She could’ve at least waited for me to put my clothes back on before she dropped that particular bombshell.” Betty chuckles as if the memory is funny.

Kate figures she’s supposed to laugh too, but she doesn’t so much as crack a smile. She doesn’t want to. She knows all too well how Betty looks when she’s told things like that. “It sounds like she was confused.”

“She said roughly the same thing. Confused’s just another word for ‘out of my gourd,’ right?”

“You know what I mean,” says Kate reproachfully. “What was her name?”

“Ruth.” Betty looks down at her hands, flexing her fingers. “It wasn’t what you’d call a grand romance.”

Kate slips her hand into Betty’s. “What would you call romantic, then?”

Betty looks at Kate. “When you asked me to try out a twirl with you, that first night we went out dancing. I’m not big on romance when I’m by myself, so I knew you were special when being around you made me … want to be.”

Kate laughs reminiscently. It is one of her fondest memories. “The look on your face when I asked you!”

“Can you blame me? The first and last dance I went to before that night, I spent the whole night in the powder room, hiding from the boy I’d agreed to meet and wishing like hell I had a cigarette. I go along to Sandy Shores, expecting it to be a total wash-out, and a beautiful dame invites me to dance with her.” Betty becomes serious. “In some ways, I think going to bed with somebody’s the same as going to a dance. It’s a crock, all that stuff girls get fed about your first time being so special just because it’s the first. I think … when it starts to mean something, that’s when it’s special.”

Kate wonders whether sex has ever meant anything for Betty before now. It’s humbling, to think that she’s the first in some ultimately _bigger_ way.

For a moment, Betty doesn’t speak. Then, she says, “Kate, do you want this?”

Kate closes her eyes for a moment before saying, “If you won’t believe that I can love you and God at the same time, or think I must not mean what I say because I wear dresses, then I don’t know how this is going to work. This is me, and I can’t change that, and I don’t want to.”

Betty looks taken aback. Kate doesn’t snap at anyone very often. “Well, I _know_ you love me, you don’t need to convince me of that, but … I’m scared I’ve forced you into this. Like you feel you have to be with me to pay me back, or something, and I don’t want it to be that way.” Betty pauses before adding (her voice low, almost as if she’s speaking to herself), “I don’t want to force you.”

“I’m afraid, too.” It is the hardest thing in the world to say, even for someone who has spent so much of her life being afraid. Maybe _because_ Kate’s spent so long being afraid.

“Of … going to Hell?”

Kate looks at the floor. She’s afraid of lots of things. Hell did feature a lot in her nightmares earlier this year. Now she dreams about Betty seeing her scars and laughing, or her father walking in on her kissing Betty. Sometimes, Kate worries that she’s simply too far gone to be happy like other people … like she waited too long to run away from her father and now nothing can ever fix her.

She decides to focus on the bit she knows for sure is making it impossible. The other things they can deal with later on, one by one. “Afraid I won’t do it right. I don’t know much about how this is meant to go, and I worry that if I do it wrong, you’ll think I don’t want you. I want you so much, but every time I start taking off my clothes, I get … frightened.” Shaking her head, Kate goes on, “No, that’s not the right word. I get nervous. It’s when I ignore it that I start getting frightened.”

“So don’t ignore it, then.”

“But it’s not how you’re supposed to feel when...” Kate trails off.

“When...?”

“When you want to – to make love with somebody.” She sighs and says quietly, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Everyone’s awkward when they start out. Doesn’t mean there’s something wrong, or you don’t want the person you’re with. I know that from personal experience.” Betty inclines her head. “I’ll tell you a secret, but you’ve gotta keep it under your hat. Promise?”

Kate gives a small smile. “I promise.”

“My first time with Ruth was a _disaster._ So bad it made me wonder whether I really liked girls after all.”

“What happened?”

Betty blushes in spite of herself. “Well, she was bigger than me, and I didn’t really know how to touch her, um, above the waist.” Kate has a feeling Betty would probably be a lot cruder if she were telling this story to anyone else. “I’d never touched another girl’s, y’know, chest, and I wasn’t sure what she would like. I actually said, out loud, ‘Why did you have to be this stacked?’ I could’ve kicked myself. I think she definitely wanted to.”

Kate giggles.

“It got better, though. Y’know, before it got worse.”

“People at Tangiers say things sometimes,” Kate says. “About how they think I can’t really want you, or that I must be stringing you along. It’s hard, having people think they know everything about you just from looking at you.”

She trails off. Part of her wants to go on and assure Betty that it’s not true … but part of her also needs to hear Betty say that she already knows.

“People think they know everything about you after two seconds? Must be tough. Me, I wouldn’t know. People are always so willing to give me a chance.” Betty smirks as she says it, but it’s conspiratorial, as though she expects Kate to understand what she’s talking about. She is dressed like a man, and sitting like one, with knees apart and chest high and proud. People think they know Betty just from looking at her, just like they do with Kate. They are the same, underneath it all, and Kate has never loved her girlfriend more than at this moment. Maybe that means that one day, Kate could love herself too.

Betty’s mouth makes such pretty shapes when she asks Kate, “Penny for your thoughts?”

“It does things to me,” Kate says softly. “When you act tough to make me laugh.”

“Hey, not just to make you laugh,” says Betty indignantly. She considers what Kate said. “Although, if it gets you going...”

Kate takes a deep breath. She’s ready to try this again.

“Come here,” she says, and pulls Betty to her, which somehow turns into pulling Betty on top of her. Kate’s heart is racketing around in her chest, but she feels lighter after voicing her concerns. At least part of her frantically beating heart – a significant part of it – is from need, rather than sheer terror. She wants Betty’s body against hers, wants Betty’s kisses and the little sounds she lets out that make Kate feel soft and on fire at the same time.

This isn’t _giving it up_. This is because Kate wants to. She’s allowed to want to, and the fact that she does counts for something. It counts for a lot.

She takes a moment to appreciate the warm glide of their lips and tongues as they kiss. Ethel Waters is scatting from the record player in the corner, and Betty is playing idly with Kate’s hair. Then, because she can’t ignore the way her heart feels like it’s getting bigger with every beat, she breaks their kiss and motions for Betty to listen.

“I’d like to go slowly, and to keep my dress on while we...” Kate falters as she asks, “Will that work?”

Betty grins. “Makes a nice change, hearing you talk about what you _like._ You should do that more.”

Kate blushes. After a moment’s hesitation, she turns her head slightly, exposing the line of her neck. “I like it when you kiss me there.” Just saying that makes her cheeks grow even hotter. She’s never said, out loud, that she enjoys being kissed.

“Here?” Betty brushes Kate’s hair aside, the better to trail kisses up Kate’s neck.

“Mmm, yes...”

When Betty starts to touch Kate with her hands, she’s confident and careful, like when she’s running the drill press at work. Kate’s own hands dither helplessly, unsure where to go or what to do. She feels so lost, so silly. Just when she thinks she might actually wail from frustration, Betty says, “Don’t be shy, you can touch me back.”

“I don’t know how.” Kate’s eyes are screwed shut from embarrassment.

“No problem.” Betty takes Kate’s hand and leads it to the place just above the waistband of her trousers. “Little circles, with your thumb. That’s what I like.”

“Just on your stomach?” Kate asks, starting to trace figure eights up and down Betty’s midsection.

“Well, all over, but that’s a good place to start.” Betty grows still for a moment, leaning into Kate’s touch. “See, you’re a natural.”

Kate wonders whether Betty is just being kind. Perhaps she gave Kate something ludicrously simple to do, so Kate would stop fussing and being so stupid. But when their lips come back together, Betty’s kisses are rather deeper than they were a few minutes ago.

“I have a bit of a thing about being touched there,” Betty says, by way of explanation.

“Oh, yes?”

“There, and the back of my neck,” Betty goes on, between kisses.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I go crazy for all that girl stuff.”

Gradually, Kate’s ministrations make it so that Betty’s shirt is becoming untucked. “I’ve always liked this shirt,” murmurs Kate. She imagines how it would feel to unfasten the buttons one by one, to trail her mouth and fingertips across Betty’s skin as it is revealed inch by inch, to worship her breasts and her ticklish ribs and the soft skin of her belly. “Can I take it off?” The unspoken question is, _“Is it all right for you to have fewer clothes on than me?”_

“Sure,” Betty says, which surprises Kate. She always thought that if two people were making love, they had to be exactly as naked as each other at all times. But Betty seems quite happy to let Kate remove her shirt and drop it over the side of the bed, without demanding that Kate take off her dress. Still, considering that Betty is wearing long trousers, she’s only half as bare as Kate would be if Kate were to take off her dress, so perhaps that’s what makes it fair-

“Will I do for you?” asks Betty, bringing Kate out of her reverie with a snap. She kneels up, straddling Kate, looking down, looking like she wants Kate but needs to be wanted in return. Suddenly, Kate sees her, really sees her, and is reminded why she wanted to take Betty’s shirt off in the first place. She’s seen Betty striding around in her bra in the locker room at Vic Mu hundreds of times, but that was in front of everyone. This is just for Kate.

“You’re perfect.” She pulls Betty to her again. Her hands stroke Betty’s shoulders, her waist, the small of her back, and the nape of Betty’s neck, which elicits an appreciative noise. She’s slightly shyer about dusting Betty’s clavicle and chest with curious, searching kisses.

Betty’s smile fades a little as something occurs to her. “We’ve gotta try and keep quiet,” Betty says regretfully, eyes closed. “Far as I know, the dance ends at midnight, but we can’t be too-” Betty’s eyes fly open as she stifles a whimper. She’s halfway out of her bra and Kate has grown bold enough to put her mouth to the exposed flesh.

“Is that nice?” asks Kate innocently. She can’t quite keep a straight face. It is easy to giggle, when she is the less vulnerable person, for once in her life.

Betty gets this look, the same determined look she wears on the floor at Vic Mu, and brings her thigh up between both of Kate’s. It fits snugly, giving Kate something to rub against. She never fails to be thrilled by how close they can get. There was a time when Kate couldn’t imagine how it would work. She used to think that they would glance off each other like magnets.  She’s so glad she was wrong.

Betty moves against her in such a way that it makes Kate’s breath catch. Betty slows and puts her lips to Kate’s ear, to ask, “You okay?” Her voice is low and intimate. Warmth pools in the bottom of Kate’s stomach.

“Mmm-hmm.” Kate brings her hand up to Betty’s cheek. “Feels nice, having you like this.”

“Sure?”

“Positive. I love you,” she adds in a rush. “So much.”

“Love you too.”

Kate doesn’t chant _I love you_ over and over in her head, to try and drown out her other feelings. Her thoughts flit pleasantly from topic to topic (unhooking another woman’s bra proves less difficult than Kate thought it would be), image to image (Betty marching across the floor at Vic Mu, filled with purpose, corralling a group of awestruck firsties), and eventually from sensation to sensation.

In time, Kate’s dress gets rucked up around her hips. She is not dreadfully alarmed, considering her underwear and stockings are still on. She is not obliged to prove, all at once, that she loves Betty and she likes women generally. Kate can just enjoy this for what it is, like when her eyes meet Betty’s across the lunch room at work, and they smile at each other. In those moments, she feels like the luckiest person ever born, knowing that she is Betty’s girl and Betty is hers. She can feel the same way now.

Betty settles herself alongside Kate. Pressing a kiss to Kate’s temple, she goes to slide her hand between Kate’s legs. It’s not the first time they’ve tried, but it is the first time Kate has been able to articulate that she certainly wants to be touched, but the thought of removing her underwear is terrifying. Well, not in so many words. All Kate manages to blurt is, “Just outside.”

Betty understands. She nods and says, “Anything you want.”

When Betty’s fingertips make contact, she lets out a noise almost like a stifled laugh. Kate tenses up and asks, “Why are you laughing?” Kate becomes dizzyingly aware that she’s wet between her legs. She knows that’s what’s supposed to happen, but she can’t help but be embarrassed. If Betty can feel it through her underwear, perhaps that means Kate’s doing something wrong.

“I’m not.” At Kate’s doubtful look, Betty insists, “I swear I’m not. It’s just – good Christ, I really wanna touch you.”

All at once, Kate feels strangely protective of her, like she’s the one guiding Betty through this and not the other way around. Is this how it is with other couples? She hasn’t got a clue. There aren’t many people she can ask. But maybe it’s not a matter of one person being in charge. Why else would this require two people, if they weren’t meant to help each other?

Meeting Betty’s eyes, Kate whispers, “So touch me, then.”

She doesn’t fly out of her skin the moment Betty starts touching her. It just feels sort of – nice, and strange, and special. Kate loves the way Betty looks now, bare from the waist up, with such an intent expression. They exchange long, lazy kisses, as if they have all the time in the world, as if the other second floor women are never coming back from their outing.

The record finishes, making Kate aware of how much time has passed. She knows it would probably be sensible to get up and put on a new record, to help camouflage the squeaks of bedsprings and the sounds she can’t help but make, but right now she would be hard-pressed to get up if she heard shouts that the building was on fire. She doesn’t want to be sensible; she just wants to keep feeling … keep feeling …

Suddenly, her hand flies downward to grab Betty’s wrist. Betty jerks and starts to scramble away, convinced that Kate is trying to push her off, but that’s not it at all. Nodding yes and shaking her head no in the one movement, Kate angles Betty’s wrist so that her fingertips are stroking a little higher, at a slightly different angle. Oh, what a difference it makes.

“Is that-?”

“Yes,” says Kate, and then, “Oh, yes...”

“That’s good?” Betty asks, sounding and looking as though she can barely believe her ears.

Kate’s lips find the whorl of Betty’s ear. “Don’t stop.”

Betty doesn’t. She doesn’t stop stroking Kate, only it’s more rubbing than stroking now. It’s harder, faster, more insistent. It makes Kate arch up into her touch, makes her want to beg. She’s aware what it is that she wants to happen – she’s felt things similar to this before, alone in her bed, or in the bath – but she had no idea it could be this way, having another person draw these feelings out of her. Being entirely at someone else’s mercy is not an idea that appeals to Kate, for all sorts of reasons, but she thinks that she could stand just this much. That she _wants_ just this much. She could be just a little helpless around her girlfriend, sometimes, as long as she’s allowed to be strong too. She thinks she is. Kate honestly thinks, right now, that she could be just about anything, with someone who loves her the way Betty does. They could both be anything, together.

“Kiss me,” she implores, and gasps as she starts to feel more than she ever thought possible. “Please, I-”

Betty obliges just in time. Something inside Kate gives, and the sound Kate makes when she feels it give is only barely muffled by Betty’s lips.

She feels like a room filling up with light, every shuttered-up bit of her pervaded by a golden glow.  This is what Kate’s been wanting, searching for, trying for, for so many years, almost a decade if she’s really honest with herself. She’s been told all her life that she wasn’t allowed to be this free, but now she can, now she _is,_ in the arms of the person she loves most in all the world. She is blissfully present for every split second of it: no floating up to the ceiling, no watching from outside herself. This is the secret Kate has kept all her life without even knowing it. Now, it’s hers and Betty’s to share, and nothing has ever been so beautiful.

The feeling passes, and when it does, Kate is so exhausted she has a tough time keeping her eyes open. Somehow, she also manages to be hyper-aware of everything around her. When Betty brushes against Kate’s bare arm, Kate’s skin sings all over.

As Kate lies there, recovering, she becomes aware of a sensation deep inside that feels almost like a second heartbeat. She knows now, why Betty made that noise that sounded like a laugh. It comes over her in waves, both that little heartbeat and the enormity of what’s just happened.

“Oh, goodness,” she whispers. Such a paltry little phrase – and yet, in some ways, a fairly accurate summary of what she’s feeling.

“Kate … you did it.”

“Was I – is that what’s supposed to happen? Did I do it right?”

“Are you kidding? You did wonderful.” Betty pauses before adding, “You look good.”

Kate stretches languorously, right down to her toes. “I feel good.” Despite the fact that she’s lying down, Kate finds herself needing an anchor. Her hand lands lightly on Betty’s forearm. No sooner has it done so than Kate’s brows knit in concern. “You’re all goosebumps.” She runs her hand over Betty’s arm, wincing at how cold she is. “Oh, Betty, why’d you let me? I kept my dress on.”

“It’s not really about _letting_ you do things. I wanted to. I’d have done it without a stitch on, if that’s what you wanted. To blazes with the cold!” Despite the laugh in Betty’s voice, Kate finally understands it properly, that look Betty had in her eyes when she asked Kate, _“Will I do?”_

Kate runs her fingertips down Betty’s naked back. “You’re so, so lovely, Betty,” she says, intentionally echoing Betty’s words from last night. From the expression on Betty’s face, it’s clear the words have the same effect on her that they had on Kate – only this time, there’s nothing separating them from each other.

Clearing her throat, Betty looks over her shoulder for the source of the pinging sound emanating from the corner. “I reckon we’re gonna have to talk to somebody about your radiator. It’s even worse than mine, and that’s sayin’ something.”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself. I know I can come and enjoy your radiator any time I like.” There is something decadent and frightening about making jokes moments after this has finished.

“So you’re just using me for my radiator? Well, isn’t that fine!” Betty laughs and sits up, rubbing her hands together for warmth before leaning over the side of the bed to retrieve her bra. “You want a drink?”

Kate is torn between needing privacy and wanting to cling to Betty. She decides she could do with being alone for a few minutes. “I’d love some tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Betty raises her eyebrows as she puts her bra back on. “Tea?”

“I don’t want to be drunk. Don’t you get drunk either. Let’s just … be together.”

“Tea it is, then.” Betty gets to her feet, pulls on her shirt and starts to do up the buttons.

“Wait.” Kate gets to her feet, places her hand on Betty’s waist, and bends to kiss the top of her breast. She straightens up and shrugs, feeling a little foolish. “I just wanted to do that before you had to get dressed.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re never going to see me with my shirt off again, right?” Betty grins as she does up the rest of her buttons.

Kate swats at her. “Go make tea.”

Alone in her bedroom, Kate isn’t quite sure how to feel. That’s why she needed to be by herself. She didn’t want Betty to think she needed comforting. She feels … a little sad, and a little proud, and a little scared of how things might change, and how she might like them.Something has happened for her, and it can’t be erased. She can’t turn back the clock and make things the way they were before.

 _But I don’t want to,_ thinks Kate, with a kind of frenzied happiness. _Oh, I don’t want to! I don’t ever want to erase this. I want this to be my life forever. I want to keep being new, with Betty._

But there is a part of this that isn’t new at all. This is part of who she is, part of who she’s always been, and so it is Marion’s triumph too. She’s gotten used to thinking of herself as Kate whenever she does something worthwhile, and Marion whenever she fails. But she’s all the one person now. Marion is just a name she used to have, not a separate person trying to wreck Kate’s life. She has to stop hating Marion, and blaming her, because it’s the same as hating herself. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to stop all at once, but she figures that this moment, with all its possibilities, is an excellent place to start.

She sits down on the bed, and draws her mother’s locket out from the neckline of her dress. _I’m sorry,_ she thinks, and means it. _I’m sorry I used to hate you so much. I’m still Marion underneath, and that’s not a bad thing. And you – you were always Kate, on the inside, only no-one would let you be. You wanted to be happy, and you wanted to love women, and you wanted to sing, and you couldn’t, because of Father. I’m going to be good to you now – good to myself. I’m not going to blame you for everything any more._

Softly, she sings a song she hasn’t sung in more than a year. It was Marion’s favourite – Kate’s favourite, back when she answered to Marion. She has other favourite songs now, but she will always love this one. “It’s a lovely day tomorrow, come and feast your tear-dimmed eyes on tomorrow’s clear blue skies...”

Betty calls from outside. “Can you open the door?”

Kate leaps up to let Betty in. Betty sidles into the room, holding a cup in each hand. The door isn’t quite closed when Kate kisses Betty. Betty kicks it the last inch before responding enthusiastically. After a moment, she laughs against Kate’s mouth and breaks away. “Kate!”

“Sorry, sorry! Did you burn yourself?” Kate looks her over, searching for spilled tea.

“Nope, I’m aces.” They both know they’ve got to be more careful, that kissing with the door almost open is the sort of folly that will get them discovered and leave them both homeless, disgraced, even unemployed … but right now, it’s difficult to care. They’ve turned a corner together.

“Oh, good.” Kate takes her cup. “Thank you so much for this.”

“No big whoop, it ain’t like you sent me looking for the moon.” Betty can’t quite keep the swagger out of her voice, let alone her walk, as she makes her way to Kate’s bed.

Kate shakes her head. For Kate, there’s something so comforting about wrapping her hands around a hot cup of tea, knowing it’s been made just for her. “It’s not about big things.”

Betty’s face softens. “The first time I...” Betty clears her throat. “The first time I came, in bed with a girl, nobody made me tea afterwards. Feels good to do it for someone else.”

As Kate sits down beside her, being careful not to spill her tea on the bedspread, she thinks, _I know how nice it is to take care of someone, or be taken care of, when you haven’t had much of that before in your life. I know. I love you._ She turns her head and presses a sweet, simple kiss into Betty’s shoulder.

“Do you want to … talk, or play records, or something?” Betty asks. “Or we could listen to the radio? I won’t moan about the carols, I promise.” She sips some tea, plainly trying to stop herself from grinning too widely. “Or I could fetch _The Sink of Solitude_ and we could do dramatic readings.”

“I just want to be with you.” Kate’s voice stays absolutely steady. _I’m getting better at saying what I want,_ she thinks proudly. _I’m getting better all the time._ Her voice also stays absolutely steady when she says, matter-of-factly, “So, I suppose I’m not a virgin any more.”

Betty eyes her. “What do you think about it?” she asks cautiously.

Kate smiles at Betty over the rim of her cup. “It’s a start.”


End file.
